Evening Class (4 page)

‘Yeah, OK.’ There was no sign of the hesitant confidences of last night. No wondering about whether people were sincere or not. ‘Good, good,’ he nodded. ‘Was it busy in the restaurant?’ he asked Nell.

‘Fair for a Monday night, you know, nothing spectacular,’ she said. She spoke perfectly pleasantly but as if to a stranger she had met on a bus.

Aidan took up his briefcase and left for school. His mistress, Mountainview College. What a fanciful idea. She certainly didn’t have the allures of a lover to him this morning.

He stood for a moment at the gates of the school yard, scene of the disgraceful and brutal fight between Tony O’Brien and that boy whose ribs were broken and who needed stitches over his eye and in his lower lip. The yard was untidy, with litter blowing in the early morning breezes. The bicycle shed needed to be painted, the bikes were not properly stacked. Outside the gates the bus stop was open and exposed to the winds. If Bus Eireann would not provide a proper bus shelter for the children who waited there after school, then the Vocational Education Committee should do so, and if they refused a parents’ committee would raise the funds. These were the kind of things Aidan Dunne had intended to do when he was Principal. Things that would never be done now.

He nodded gruffly to the children who saluted him, instead of addressing them all by name which was his usual way, and he walked into the staffroom to find no one there except Tony O’Brien mixing a headache seltzer in a glass.

‘I’m getting too old for these nights,’ he confided to Aidan. Aidan longed to ask him why he didn’t just cut them out, but that would be counterproductive. He must make no false stupid moves, in fact no moves at all until he had worked out what his plan was to be. He must continue in his bland, good-natured way. ‘I suppose all work and no play…’ he began. But Tony O’Brien was in no mood to hear platitudes. ‘I think forty-five is a sort of watershed. It’s half of ninety after all, it’s telling you something. Not that some of us listen.’ He drained the glass and smacked his lips.

‘Was it worth it, I mean the late night?’

‘Who knows if it’s ever worth it, Aidan. I met a nice little girl, but what’s the good of that when you have to face the Fourth Years.’ He shook his head like a dog coming out of the sea trying to get rid of the water. And this man was going to run Mountainview College for the next twenty years while poor old Mr Dunne was expected to sit by and let it happen. Tony O’Brien gave him a heavy clap on the shoulder. ‘Still,
ave atque vale
as you Latinists say. I have to be getting on, only four hours and three minutes before I stand with that healing pint in my hand.’

Aidan would not have thought that Tony O’Brien would have known the Latin words for hallo and goodbye. He himself had never used any Latin phrases in the staffroom, aware that many of his colleagues might not have studied it and fearing to show off in front of them. It just showed you must never underestimate the enemy.

The day passed as days always pass, whether you have a hangover like Tony O’Brien, or a heavy heart like Aidan Dunne, and the next passed, and the next. Aidan had still settled on no definite plan of action. He could never find the right moment to tell them at home that his hopes of being Principal had been misplaced. In fact, he thought it would be easier to say nothing until the decision was announced, let it appear a surprise to everyone.

And he had not forgotten his plans to make himself a room. He sold the dining table and chairs and bought the little desk. When his wife worked in Quentin’s restaurant and his daughters went out on their dates, he sat and planned it for himself. Gradually he assembled little bits of his dream: second-hand picture frames, a low table for near the window, a big cheap sofa that fitted the space exactly. And one day he would get loose covers, something in gold or yellow, a sunny colour, and he would get a square of carpet that would be a splash of some other colour, orange, purple, something with life and vigour.

They weren’t very interested at home so he didn’t tell them his plans. In a way he felt that his wife and daughters thought it was yet another harmless little interest for him, like the projects in Transition Year and his long struggle to get a few metres of wildlife garden up and running in Mountainview.

‘Any word of the big job above in the school?’ Nell asked unexpectedly one evening when the four of them were seated around the kitchen table.

He felt his heart lurch at the lie. ‘Not a whisper. But they’ll be voting next week, that’s for sure.’ He seemed calm and unruffled.

‘You’re bound to get it. Old Walsh loves the ground you walk on,’ Nell said.

‘He doesn’t have a vote, as it happens, so that’s no use to me.’ Aidan gave a nervous little laugh.

‘Surely you’ll get it, Daddy?’ Brigid said.

‘You never know, people want different things in Principals. I’m sort of slow and steady, but that mightn’t be what’s needed these days.’ He spread out his hands in a gesture to show that it was all beyond him but wouldn’t matter very much either way.

‘But who would they have if they didn’t have you?’ Grania wanted to know.

‘Wouldn’t I be doing the horoscope column if I knew that? An outsider maybe, someone inside that we hadn’t reckoned on…’ He sounded good-natured and full of fair play. The job would go to the best man or woman. It was as simple as that.

‘But you don’t think they’ll pass you over?’ Nell said.

There was something that he hated in her tone. It was a kind of disbelief that he could possibly let this one slip. It was the phrase ‘passed over’, so dismissive, so hurtful. But she didn’t know, she couldn’t guess, that it had already happened.

Aidan willed his smile to look confident. ‘Passed over? Me? Never!’ he cried.

‘That’s more like it, Daddy,’ said Grania, before going upstairs to spend further time in the bathroom where she possibly never saw any more the beautiful images of Venice on the wall, only her face in the mirror and her anxieties that it should look well for whatever outing was planned tonight.

It was their sixth date. Grania knew now that he definitely wasn’t married. She had asked him enough questions to have tripped him up. Every night so far he had wanted her to come back to his place for coffee. Every night so far she had said no. But tonight could be different. She really liked him. He knew so much about things, and he was far more interesting than people of her own age. He wasn’t one of those middle-aged ravers who pretended they were twenty years younger.

There was only one problem. Tony worked at Dad’s school. She had asked him the very first time she met him whether he knew an Aidan Dunne, but hadn’t said he was her father. It seemed an ageist sort of thing to say, putting herself in a different generation. And there were loads of Dunnes around the place, it wasn’t as if Tony would make the connection. There wasn’t any point in mentioning it to Dad, not yet anyway, not until it developed into anything if it did. And if it were the real thing then everything else like him working in the same place as Dad would fall into place, and Grania made a silly face at herself in the mirror and thought that maybe Tony would have to be even nicer than ever to her if she was going to be the Principal’s daughter.

Tony sat in the bar and dragged deep on his cigarette. This was one thing he was going to have to cut down on when he was Principal. There really couldn’t be any more smoking on the premises. And probably fewer pints at lunchtime. It hadn’t been actually spelled out but it had been hinted at. Heavily. But that was it. Not a huge price to pay for a good job. And they weren’t going to ask about his social life. It might still be Holy Catholic Ireland, but it was the 1990s after all.

And by extraordinary timing he had just met a girl who really did hold his attention, and might well be around for more than a few weeks’ duration. A bright lively girl called Grania, worked in the bank. Sharp as anything, but not at all hard or tough. She was warm and generous in her outlook. They didn’t come in that kind of a package often. She was twenty-one, which was of course a problem. Less than half his age, but she wouldn’t always be that. When he was sixty she’d be thirty-five, which was half of seventy when you came to think of it. She’d be catching up all the time.

She hadn’t come back to the townhouse with him, but she had been very frank. It wasn’t because she was afraid of sex, it was just that she wasn’t ready for it with him yet, that was all, and if they were to get along together then they must respect each other and not one of them force the other. He had agreed with her, that seemed perfectly fair. And for once it did. Normally he would have regarded such a response as a challenge, but not with Grania. He was quite ready to wait. And she had assured him that she wasn’t going to play games.

He saw her come into the bar and he felt lighter and happier than he had for a long time. He wasn’t going to play games either. ‘You look lovely,’ he said. ‘Thank you for dressing up for me, I appreciate it.’

‘You’re worth it,’ she said simply.

They drank together, like people who had always known each other, interrupting, laughing, eager to hear what the other would say.

‘There are lots of things we could do this evening,’ Tony O’Brien said. ‘There’s a New Orleans evening, you know, Creole food and jazz in one of the hotels, or there was this movie we were talking about last night… or I could cook for you at home. Show you what a great chef I am.’

Grania laughed. ‘Am I to believe that you’ll be making me Won Tons and Peking Duck? You see, I remember that you said you had a neighbouring Chinese restaurant.’

‘No, if you come home with me I’ll cook for you myself. To show you how much it means to me. I won’t just get menu A or menu B, good and all as they may be.’ Tony O’Brien had not spoken so directly for a long time.

‘I’d love to come home with you, Tony,’ Grania said very simply, without a hint of playing games.

Aidan slept in fits and starts. And then near dawn he felt wide awake and clear headed. All he had was the doddering word of a retiring Principal, a man fussed and confused by the way the world was going. The vote had not been taken, there was nothing to be depressed about, no excuses to make, action to take, career to abandon. Today would be a much, much better day now that he was clear about all this.

He would speak to Mr Walsh, the present Principal, and ask him briefly and directly if his remarks of some days ago had any substance and intent, or if they were mere speculation. After all, as a non-voting member he might also have been a non-listening member to their deliberations. He would be brief, Aidan told himself. That was his weakness, a tendency to go on at too great a length. But he would be crystal clear. What was it that the poet Horace said? Horace had a word for every occasion.
Brevis esse aboro obscums fio
. Yes, that was it, the more I struggle to be brief, the more unintelligible I become. In the kitchen Brigid and Nell exchanged glances and shrugs when they heard him whistling. He wasn’t a very good whistler, but nobody could remember when he had last even attempted it.

Just after eight o’clock the phone rang.

‘Three guesses,’ Brigid said, reaching for more toast.

‘She’s very reliable, you both are,’ Nell said, and went to answer it.

Aidan wondered was it very reliable for one of his daughters to spend the night with a man who had been described by the other as a heavy date. About whom only a week ago she had raised tentative worries, whether he was reliable… sincere. Aidan didn’t voice these wonderings. He watched Nell at the phone.

‘Sure, fine, good. Do you have proper clothes to go into the bank in or will you come back here? Oh, you brought a sweater, how lucky. Righto, love, see you this evening.’

‘And how did she seem?’ Aidan asked.

‘Now, Aidan, don’t start taking attitudes. We’ve always agreed that it’s much wiser that Grania should stay with Fiona in town instead of getting a dodgy lift home.’

He nodded. None of them thought for a moment that Grania was staying with Fiona.

‘No problems, then?’ Tony asked.

‘No, I told you… they treat me as a grown up.’

‘And so do I in a different way.’ He reached out for her as she sat on the edge of the bed.

‘No, Tony, I can’t possibly. We have to go to work. I have to get to the bank, you have to go to Mountainview.’

He was pleased that she remembered the name of the place he worked. ‘No, they won’t mind, they’re very lax there, let the teachers do what they like most of the time.’

She laughed at him. ‘No that’s not true, not even a little bit true. Get up and have a shower, I’ll put on some coffee. Where’s the machine?’

‘It’s only instant, I’m afraid.’

‘Oh, that’s not classy enough for me at all, I’m afraid, Mr O’Brien,’ she said, shaking her head at him in mock disapproval. ‘Things will have to improve round here if I am to visit again.’

‘I was hoping you’d pay a visit this evening,’ he said.

Their eyes met. There was no guile.

‘Yes, if you have real coffee,’ she said.

‘Consider it done,’ he said.

Grania had toast, Tony had two cigarettes.

‘You really should cut down on those,’ she said. ‘I could hear your wheeze all night.’

‘That was passion,’ he said.

‘No, it was cigarettes.’ She was firm.

Perhaps, perhaps for this lively bright young woman he might, he just might, be able to cut them out. It was bad enough to be so much older than her, he didn’t want to be so much wheezier as well. ‘I might change, you know,’ he said seriously. ‘There are going to be a lot of changes in my life at work for one thing, but more important, now that I’ve met you I think I might have the strength to cut out a lot of the rubbishy bits.’

‘Believe me, I’ll help you,’ Grania said, reaching for his hand across the table. ‘And you must help me too. Help me to keep my mind alert and busy. I’ve stopped reading since I left school. I want to read again.’

‘I think we should both take the day off to cement this promise,’ he said, only half joking.

‘Hey, you won’t even be thinking about suggesting that next term,’ she laughed.